


A Citizen Of The Universe And A Gentleman To Boot

by Sylphidine_Gallimaufry



Category: Guardians of Childhood & Related Fandoms, Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Camaraderie, Canon Blending, Doctor Who References, Family, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Inspired by Fanfiction, My First Work in This Fandom, Parallel Universes, Pitch Black Needs a Hug, Redemption, References to Fringe (TV), Very mild body horror, emeralddawn, movieverse and bookverse combined sort of, take a guess which one Pitch is, tea drinkers versus coffee drinkers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-12
Updated: 2018-03-19
Packaged: 2018-04-04 02:42:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 7,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4122916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sylphidine_Gallimaufry/pseuds/Sylphidine_Gallimaufry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thanks to her children and their friendship with Jack Frost, Emily Bennett has met any number of beings that society would tell her were merely tales from folklore.  But there's one more she has yet to meet... a spirit about whom she's curious, and for whom she feels more than a little sorry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Room For Living

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Learning to See](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2070993) by [emeralddawn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/emeralddawn/pseuds/emeralddawn). 



> This was inspired by [ "Learning To See"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2070993) by the very talented [emeralddawn](http://archiveofourown.org/users/emeralddawn/pseuds/emeralddawn). You will definitely need to read that first BEFORE reading this [A friendly warning... have a tissue box handy]. 
> 
> One of her commenters casually wondered what would happen if Jamie's mom met Pitch, and thus my hobbyhorse was off and running.
> 
> There are going to be DOCTOR WHO references sprinkled throughout this story, not just the title. For this one, let's assume that DW is a television show and thus fictional in their world.

**PROLOGUE - FEBRUARY 2017:**

"You want to. Adopt. The Boogeyman."

It was a flat statement, not a question, punctuated for emphasis and delivered in a cheeky tone by her far-too-often-impossible elder son, Jack Frost.

Emily Bennett leaned forward from her seat on the couch and pushed both hands through her hair. "I never said _adopt_. I just think that, from all you've said, he could use someone to talk to."

Jack gave her a sideways grin and scritched behind the ears of the greyhound curled up at his feet. "Face it, Emmy. You want to rescue another hard-luck case, like Abby here." He paused, and then said more seriously, "Or like me."

No matter how much reassurance Emily provided, how many hugs he got from Jamie and Sophie, how many claps-on-the back from North, how many sweet motherly flutterings from Tooth or bantered exchanges with Bunny, they never quite offset the centuries of solitude Jack had endured. Nor could they dim the echo of what the winter spirit now suspected had been a sincere offer of friendship from Pitch Black, the King of Nightmares.

_"I don't know it's like to be cast out? To not be believed in? To long for... a family?"_

He looked into Emily's face with a determined expression and said, "You could be right. And he's a lot less scary than the Vashta Nerada."

Emily smiled back at him.


	2. Fathers And Daughters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which it becomes clear which side of the family influenced Jamie's active imagination.

**FLASHBACK – August 31, 1985.**

Emily James bounced on her couch cushion next to her tall and lanky father as they sat in the den together. It was Saturday again, a few weeks after her eighth birthday, and it was her turn for Dad Time. 

There was a tradition in her house that each of the three James children got to have one-on-one uninterrupted evenings with their father on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, as long as their homework was done. Their father worked long hours the rest of the week and usually got home after the children were in bed. Their mother was a homemaker and spent weekday evenings supervising completion of school assignments and household chores before sitting down to write her weekly book review column for the local paper. Sundays were Family Day, with church in the morning, a big dinner in the afternoon, and rousing games of Pokeno or gin rummy at night. 

The James family was moderately well-off, and had a furnished basement in their split-level house, with plenty of board games, a small pool table, and a stereo. On their nights, which were Thursday and Friday respectively, Emily’s older brothers Don and Paul took over the basement and alternated between trying to defeat their Dad at Stratego, Battleship, or chess, playing record albums or discussing their favorite ballplayers. 

On Emily’s night, which was Saturday, it was the big television in the den and science fiction. STAR TREK at 6 o’clock, then dinner on TV trays, and then a B-movie on the local channel. Emily loved to be scared. Whether the Saturday night movie was about alien invasions or supernatural hauntings, she simply adored what she saw. Her mother would occasionally have to comfort her after a nightmare, but for the most part there was nothing she loved more than monsters and spaceships. Her imagination overlooked the bad costumes and the fake blood, and her willingness to suspend disbelief filled in the implausible logic gaps to make the stories come to life in a way that would have had Roger Corman eating his heart out, had he known. 

Young Emily grew up believing in The Boogeyman, right alongside Mothra and the Tholians and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. She occasionally wondered if the shadows that crisscrossed her bedroom ceiling at night were alive. 

Her dad loved sharing cheesy movies with her, saying they’d been a big part of his own childhood. Even though he was an aerospace engineer and worked on REAL spaceships [or so Emily believed], Mr. James never pointed out how unrealistic the science was in their sci-fi viewing, and never made fun of her for occasionally having to hide when the horror films were a little TOO scary. 

This Saturday, her dad said, was going to be the start of something different. On Channel 50, which was one of the fancy extra channels, they’d be showing a real ongoing science fiction *series*, with lots and lots of episodes… something older than STAR TREK, something that had both spaceships AND monsters and even time travel! Was Emily interested? 

Emily James was glued to the screen that week, as a plucky reporter and her robot dog investigated a local mystery involving witchcraft, and to the screen the next week when two teachers, a high school girl, and a mysterious old man travelled back to caveman times in what looked like a big blue wooden packing crate but was really a spaceship, and to the screen the week after that when they all travelled into the far future to an alien city and met robots who were really aliens in machines but were horrible monsters nonetheless… 

And Dad Time with Emily on Saturday nights in their suburban home in New York became inextricably bound to DOCTOR WHO, right up until she went away to college in Pennsylvania

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a bit of author-insert here, a mishmash of my own childhood and later experiences. EmeraldDawn mentioned in "Learning To See" that Emily was thirty-seven in 2014, which would have had her be eight years old in August 1985, when PBS Channel 50 Montclair out of New Jersey would have started broadcasting DOCTOR WHO in episode order after the K-9 AND COMPANY special.
> 
> http://gallifreybase.com/w/index.php/New_Jersey_Network
> 
> Some more links for those non-USA readers who may not get some of the references.
> 
>  
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pokeno_game  
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratego  
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Corman


	3. Settling Cracks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which cold and dark get under Emily's skin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have taken HUGE liberties with the geography of the campus of a particular university in a particular Mid-Atlantic state in the US for the purposes of this story. Any alumni of said campus who recognize my poor attempt may flog me mercilessly in the comments.

**FLASHBACK - Early January, 1996**

Afterwards, snowed in at her dorm room with plenty of time to think, Emily James squarely placed the blame on barometric pressure and adrenaline. 

====================

"But Emily, you _love_ horror movies, and I had to call in a lot of favors to get this one!"

Her boyfriend's exasperation was clear to her even through the phone line And really, she had no real excuse *not* to go to the Friday night campus movie. She should be grateful that there was _anything_ to do on campus during the break between semesters.

But... INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS... her dad had loved that one... 

It still hurt to think about her dad... a yawning, gaping hole in her chest that had been there since October. 

Her mother, sunk in her own loss, scarcely even acknowledged Emily over Christmas. As for her brothers, Don alternated between morose and angry, and Paul took the opposite approach, yammering nonsensically about everything EXCEPT their father. Between the silence, the rage, and the annoyance, it was a relief to Emily to have the excuse of a "wintersession" class to hurry back to campus and get away from that house. 

Emily pulled her thoughts back to Kevin, who was waiting for her answer on the other end of the phone connection. "Okay, okay... I'm getting my feet on, I'll meet you at the HUB in five," she said in what she hoped was a placating way. Matching words to actions, she wiped her glasses, pulled her ankle boots out from under her desk and tugged them on, looked around for her 4th Doctor scarf and found it under her leather blazer on the back of her desk chair. 

While she might not know for certain whether she still loved horror movies, she _knew_ she loved Kevin Bennett, and she appreciated his gesture of using his position at Student Programming to try to please her.

As she looped the scarf around her neck, Emily registered the usual nightly rattle of the wooden window frame and what sounded like a groan from the crack in the ceiling. She was unfazed; it was a factor of living in one of the oldest dorms on campus, and the noises it made at night reminded her of her old childhood bedroom. 

She pulled her dorm room door shut, locked it, ran down three flights of stairs, and began the cold, brisk walk across the quad.

====================

Emily stormed off in enraged silence, very nearly stomping in her haste to get away from Kevin. His laughter when she decided to open up about her imaginary childhood friend Creak had cut her to the quick. The fact that he didn't even try to follow her, beyond a halfhearted "I was only kidding", and then the dismissive statement, "You're being childish. I'll see you tomorrow", made her blood boil more and gave her energy for a truly dramatic exit into the dark night. 

She didn't want to go back to the dorms, and had tacked off in the opposite direction, towards the park. The cold was soothing, and under the streetlamps the crisscrossing branches of bare trees created stark shadows on the path. 

It was a stupid fight, he was a stupid jerk, and she was stupid to get so upset about it. 

_You are not stupid. You are afraid. You are afraid you will forget your father._

Now where had that thought come from? And why did it NOT sound like her own voice in her own head, but instead sounded like.... 

... well, it sounded like Creak.

Or like the voice she had imagined for Creak, all those years ago. When she was very little, she used to call anyone who spoke with an English accent, male or female, "a history guy", after the various period dramas her mother liked to watch on MASTERPIECE THEATRE. Thus it was not too far a stretch that when young Emily wanted and needed an imaginary friend in her room at night, someone who was older and smarter, she made him British. 

But Emily was eighteen now, going on nineteen. Too old for imaginary friends. Too old for Creak, whose voice used to whisper in reply to her from the ceiling crack just above her closet door. Too old to be hearing a British accent from someone who wasn't there, even if it seemed right in line with her subconscious train of thought. 

Her vehemence was starting to wear away, and she slowed her steps. She was a lot further into the park than she'd intended to go; the streetlights were a lot further apart now and the wind was picking up. She was debating whether to turn around and head back to the dorms, perhaps even call Kevin and apologize for her short temper, when she caught a glimpse of.... something? someone? ... among a thicker clump of trees off the path. If it was a person, he or she was very tall, wearing a long trenchcoat that flapped in the wind.

Emily told herself not to panic. She put her hand in her pocket around her keys, prepared to punch and kick if needed. She took a few more steps down the path and then swiftly changed direction and started back the way she came, pacing briskly and letting her body language seem authoritative and not frightened. 

That confidence lasted only until the voice... the polished, smug, yes-it-was-real-and-it-was-British voice... purred directly in her ear. 

_This really isn't a safe place. I'd run if I were you._

The mysterious figure was right at her elbow, having moved faster than humanly possible, and somehow what she had taken to be a trenchcoat looked now more like a robe, trailing away into shadows at his feet, and it had to be someone playing a joke on her... 

And then someone screamed in the depths of the wooded park. 

And Emily blindly ran, all the way back to South Hall. 

The next day the campus was abuzz with the news that there had been an assault in the park overnight. Kevin was sweetly apologetic, crestfallen that the same fate might have been Emily's, and Emily accepted his apology. 

Together they watched the blizzard that swept in seemingly out of nowhere and buried much of Pennsylvania under three feet of snow. 

Emily kept the lights on continuously in her dorm room for three days straight, fearful of the dark.


	4. Mothers And Sons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a tradition is passed down.

**December 25, 2014**

"Bowties are NOT cool, no matter what The Doctor says."

"Hey, when _my_ Doctor wears a bowtie, it's cool. When _your_ Doctor wears a bowtie, he looks like a dork." 

"At least _my_ Doctor doesn't have a nose like Pitch's."

Jack mimed shaping a snowball and lobbing it at Jamie's head, before catching Emily's eye and grinning. 

Sophie hushed them both. "I want to see Santa!!!"

"And I want to see **MY** Doctor," said Emily in her no-more-nonsense voice. "Settle down, gang. It's starting." 

She squeezed between the two boys on the couch and pulled Sophie onto her lap as the opening credits of the DOCTOR WHO Christmas special spiraled across the television screen. When The Twelfth Doctor made his appearance, Emily whispered to herself, "Hi, Dad. Wish you were here." 

**March 2014**

Emily Bennett's job was now stable enough that overtime was very nearly a thing of the past, and she was home more evenings than not. This gave her time to reclaim a piece of her childhood, and to share it with her children.

She had taken it very much to heart when Jamie had hurtfully driven Jack off back in January, complaining about her spending all her time with Jack, and not as much with him and Sophie. Fortunately, Jack had only been gone for a few weeks, and had returned, albeit only due to the nagging of one of Toothiana's mini-fairies. It was enough of an object lesson, however, and gave Emily the impetus to establish Mom Time, where each of her children would have one-on-one attention.

[Emily wondered whether a similar complaint from one of her brothers had given her parents the idea for Dad Time, all those years ago.]

Sophie, as the youngest, got to pick first, and with a kindergartner's logic she picked Mondays as her Mom Time night.

Despite Jamie's dreaminess, he was a good student and usually had his middle school homework finished within an hour after dinner. His night for Mom Time was Tuesday.

Both kids agreed Wednesdays could be Jack's, and Thursdays remained Family-Meal-And-Movie night.

The system worked very well... 

...for almost three weeks... 

...until Jamie discovered DOCTOR WHO...

...and Emily discovered something else about Jack.

**April 2014**

As she opened the kitchen windows on a Saturday afternoon to let in the first warm air of spring, after the cold wave of the last few months, Emily could not resist singing a snippet of a pop song she remembered from her childhood. 

_It was winter 1963_

_We felt like the world would freeze_

_With John F. Kennedy and The Beatles..._

"That one wasn't my fault!" protested Jack, standing at her elbow. "And I gave them a 'soft winter' the year after." 

Emily arched a disbelieving eyebrow and started to make a sarcastic "mmmm-hmmm" sound, then remembered that there apparently really **was** an Old Man Winter [according to Jack, "that guy’s a kill-joy if anyone is!”] and thought better of it. 

Sophie was upstairs in her bedroom drawing; Jamie was out at Claude and Caleb's. With no distractions from her other children, Jack's interjection seemed to provide the perfect opportunity for Emily to ask about something that had been on her mind for some time.

Looping her arm over the lanky teenager's shoulders and walking with him into the living room, she inquired quietly, "So there are specific storms that _are_ your fault... like the last few months ... they call it a polar vortex... that was you, wasn't it? Because of Jamie?"

She tried to sound cautious and concerned, not accusatory.

She apparently had not succeeded, because Jack stiffened, then leaped across the room to perch on the arm of the couch and rocked on his bare heels, a sign Emily had come to recognize as Jack's standard way of coping with emotional distress... keep moving, and it will hurt less. In theory. 

He took his time answering. "Yeah. If I'm really angry or upset, sometimes I lose control over my powers." He ducked his head, but Emily gently raised his chin with her fingertips. 

"I don't blame you in the slightest for being hurt and upset, Jack. Not after what you've been through. I'm just impressed that you kept it under enough control that you didn't also bury half the country under a glacier." 

She continued, "Do you remember every storm you make? I'm not trying to grill you, but I'm curious. There was a doozy of a blizzard my freshman year in college that hit without warning..." 

Before Jack could reply, Jamie burst in the front door with a DVD case in his hand. "Mom! Jack! Caleb showed me the coolest thing! And he lent me his copy! Can we watch it tonight? PLEASE???!!!" 

Emily and Jack grinned at each other and Jack quipped, "Speaking of destructive forces of nature..."

"C'mon, guys, be serious! Look at this! This show's like a million years old, and still running, and really good!" And Jamie revealed the cover of the 50th anniversary episode of DOCTOR WHO, and Emily felt her heart leap in her chest. She'd heard years ago that her childhood favorite series had been relaunched, but between work and babies and becoming a single mother, it hadn't registered as strongly on her radar as it might have under less stressful circumstances.

Jack, caught up in Jamie's enthusiasm, said, "Hey! I remember when that show first started!" He turned to Emily. "You remember that 'soft winter' I mentioned? Well, I had to see what all the fuss was about when every kid in England ran inside at the same time on Saturdays, so I made a point of hanging around and looking through windows and watching all these families gawking at the television. It was a great show!" 

Emily was torn between sadness at yet another sign of Jack's loneliness in the three centuries before he'd been visible to children and the excitement of a burgeoning idea to have her whole family share in something once very important to her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some history notes for this chapter and the last one...
> 
> 1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_of_1962%E2%80%9363_in_the_United_Kingdom
> 
> 2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_blizzard_of_1996
> 
> 3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_2014_North_American_cold_wave


	5. Taking Refuge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which one mystery is resolved and another takes its place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE: This chapter and all chapters from hereon in take place in "the present day", ie. 2017, although in a slightly different 2017 than what you, my Gentle Readers, and I, yr. obedient servant, are currently experiencing.

“Mom? Jamie just called here and asked if you could pick him up at the library, instead of Mrs. Belazair. He sounded weird.”

Emily held the phone to her ear with one mittened hand while she waved to the rest of her book group with the other, heading to her car in the diner parking lot.  It was 9pm on the dot on a late January night. "All right, Sophie, we just broke up for the night anyway.“  She wondered to herself what would qualify as "weird" in the mind of a nine-year-old who was taking art lessons with the Easter Bunny.  "If he calls again, tell him I'm on my way."

It was nice to still be needed by her fifteen-year-old, even when having TWO teenagers in the house occasionally shredded her nerves.  The immortal teen kept the mortal one's daredevil antics in check for the most part, but Jamie still had his moments of testing the bounds of common sense.  

Fifteen minutes later, Emily was parked outside the Burgess Public Library.  She expected to see her younger son waiting for her on the stone steps, but there was no sign of him.  

No amount of Guardian oversight could compensate for a mother's worry.  The addition of Jack into their family was a gift beyond price, and she treasured her growing comfort with the presence of the embodiments of Hope, Wonder, Memories, and Dreams in the lives of all her children. Nevertheless, when Jamie still had not come out of the building after six minutes, Emily pulled out her phone and started dialing.

Fortunately, both for Emily's nerves and Jamie's hide, Jamie answered on the second ring.  "Mom?  I didn't know what to do.  Can you meet me over at the gazebo?" His voice cracked for a moment, and Emily heard him swallow.

"And mom?  Please don't freak out."

Her son needed her.  Her son needed her to be calm. Emily got out of the car, locked it, and started to walk across the library lawn towards the gazebo on the town common.  Calmly, rationally... until she saw a familiar golden glow, casting light on an unmoving figure lying sprawled on the gazebo's wooden steps....

Screw rationality.

She began to sprint, and cleared the last hundred yards at a clip that would have done any runner proud.  

The golden glow emanated from none other than the Sandman, hovering a few feet above the ground.  Jamie stood next to him, very nearly eye to eye with him due to a recent growth spurt.

The prone figure was not Jack.  

She had been so afraid that something had happened to Jack.

Emily tamped down her runaway thoughts before they drove her to hysteria.  Jack was safely at home, "hanging out" with Sophie and Aster... they never called it "babysitting" anymore.

Jack was safe, Jamie was safe, and a stranger needed her help.

She bent over to get a closer look at the person half-on, half-off the gazebo steps, and could not stop herself from gasping in distress.

It? He? Whoever it was, it lay upon its side with arms drawn up to protect its head, legs pulled tightly up against its chest, face pressed against its knees and hidden beneath a tangle of long matted black hair..  Humanoid, certainly, but definitely NOT human.  Bipedal, garbed in rags showing dirty skin with a greyish tinge under the harsh park lighting.  Through the tatters Emily could see lines of necrosis on the being's coiled hands and arms, and didn't doubt, from the smell, that there were more unseen patches.

She hoped that the stranger hadn't heard her gasp and her near-retch.  She was the adult here, and had to act accordingly.  Careful not to touch, she moved closer and said, quietly but firmly, "If you can hear me and you are able to talk, I'm here to help.  Tell me what you need."

In response, the hands slowly uncurled into palms and fingers... impossibly long fingers that waggled as if tasting the night air.  The arms lowered, the head raised, but the eyes stayed closed, still mostly obscured by falling hair. Emily only had time to get the fleeting impression of a beaky nose and a jutting chin before the nearly lipless mouth opened and a scratchy voice emerged.

"I know you... I danced with you once upon a dream..."

Gargling-with-broken-glass quality aside, the voice was strikingly familiar to Emily, particularly with that distinctive British accent.

"Creak?" she whispered in awe and horror.

Sandy floated down to hover nearby, incomprehensible symbols of test tubes and horses and skulls and vines flying over his head and hers at a breakneck pace.

Jamie put his hand on her shoulder, calmer now.  "No, Mom," he said.  "That's Pitch Black. That's the Nightmare King".  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tags are going to be updated. Warnings ahead for mentions of body horror in upcoming chapters. Pitch may be a drama king, but SOMETHING cleaned his clock but good, and the story of how he got that way isn't pretty.


	6. Giving Shelter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which split-second decisions may cast long shadows.

She should have been terrified. 

She remembered the first time she had actually seen the Tooth Fairy, several years ago.  In Jamie's darkened room, Toothiana had appeared as a large hovering shadow, and in her adrenaline-fueled panic Emily had thought her son was being attacked by the Boogeyman.  She had been utterly terrified then.

Now the Boogeyman lay at her feet, desperately wounded, feverish and delirious. 

Her childhood and her adult life were crashing together like two parallel universes trying to occupy the same space-time coordinates.

Creak was the Boogeyman.  The Boogeyman was Creak.

Her imaginary friend was real.  And he had a real name.. Pitch Black.

And Pitch Black had committed acts of real horror, had caused real damage.  He had terrorized villages and towns during the Dark Ages centuries ago, according to Jack, who'd heard tales from North.

Pitch Black had kidnapped Toothiana's mini-fairies.  Pitch Black had destroyed Aster's eggs. 

_Pitch Black had killed Sandy._

Pitch Black had actually tried to subsume Jamie and his friends in nightmare sand.  Whether that would have harmed the children physically as well as emotionally, Emily didn't know, nor did she want to think about it at this moment.  

Nightmare King.... Boogeyman... now Pitch Black was helpless, and looked as he were dying.

She was a mother.

She was a believer. 

She had to help him.

Emily snapped to attention, made up her mind, and swung into action, barking out instructions. "Sandy, please stay here with Jamie and keep an eye on.. Pitch."  She was going to have to get used to thinking of him as Pitch.  "Jamie, please call the house and ask Jack to come here on the double.  Ask Aster if he can stay a little while longer with Sophie and if he can keep her distracted.  I'm going to bring the car around."

Sandy looked startled, but Jamie seemed to perk up now that someone else was in charge and giving him something concrete to do.  He asked, "Mom, are you doing what I think you're doing?"

"And what do you think I'm doing?"

Her son smiled for the first time all night.  "You're a superhero.  You're saving the day.  Even if it's the bad guy."

That helped crack the tension, and Emily reached over to hug him.  "All in a day's work for Bicycle Repair Man."

Ten minutes later, when she pulled the car up to the sidewalk nearest the gazebo, the scene she viewed through the windscreen was a bit different.  

Jack was there and perched atop his staff, frowning fiercely.  Jamie had a hand on Jack's shoulder, as though to get him to calm down.

Sandy was nowhere to be seen.

Pitch...

Pitch was still prone, but he was covered head-to-toe in sparkling dreamsand laced with frost, with a ribbon of it circling his head in the form of sharp-winged black, blue, and golden butterflies. 

Emily sighed, rubbed her forehead, got out of the car, and jogged around to pull a blanket out of the boot.  

 


	7. Roadblocks And Back Alleys

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Emily bickers with several spirits only slightly less stubborn than a brick wall.

Jamie and Emily between them managed to get the unconscious Pitch wrapped securely in the oversized blanket, while Jack stood with folded arms wrapped tightly around his staff.  The scowl on his face could have soured milk.  After a few minutes of watching them try to lift the flopping form, Jack shook his head in exasperation and snapped, "You two are going to get yourselves arrested for bodysnatching." 

Jamie snapped back, "He's a lot heavier than he looks!" Then a confused expression crept over his face. " _Why_ is he so heavy?"

"Can't tell you, kiddo. Spirit stuff. Secret society rules and all that."

It was the human teenager's turn to scowl. "Not the time or the place, Jack," he said, sounding an awful lot like his mother at the moment.

"Sorry," said the immortal teenager in reply, not sounding terribly sorry. "Seriously, guys. If I carry him, together he and I'll both be the nearest thing to invisible. You two will just end up looking weird, lugging a bulky blanket out of your car. Let me take him... I assume we're going back to the house, Em?"

Emily looked warily up at Jack.  "I can't think why not."

"I can think of ten reasons why not.  And North and Tooth could give you a thousand reasons why not.  And Cottontail's gonna blow his top."

The sharp-winged butterflies made of melded dreamsand and ice still circled Pitch's head. Staving off Emily's next question, Jack said, "Sandy gave him quite a wallop; he's gonna be out for the count for a couple of days."

"DAYS??!!"

"Days."

Jack lifted the Boogeyman, blanket and all, into his arms with seeming ease and slung him ungracefully over his shoulder.  "Meet you back home, guys.  I'll sneak in the back and put Mr. Sleeping Beauty here in the hall closet for now, while you guys sort out what to tell Sophie."

Jamie and Emily looked at one another, dismayed.  They'd forgotten about Sophie.

====================

Fortunately, Sandy seemed to have had some foresight and made arrangements of his own while Emily had been fetching the car, because Sophie was sound asleep upstairs when Jamie and Emily got in.  

They both walked into the living room to find a six-foot-one humanoid lagomorph and a five-foot-five frost sprite angrily whisper-hissing at one another, nose to nose.

 "Ya gumby, do you have any idea what you've done?"

"What **I've** done?  Don't pin this one on me.  I'm the innocent bystander here."

"Innocent?  Oh, pull the other one, mate.  Like anyone's going to believe that from you, snowflake."

Emily waded in, pushed the two Guardians apart with a backhanded whack on each one's shoulder, and stood between them with her arms crossed in her best "because I'm the mom, that's why" style.   Bunnymund's green eyes widened in shock, whereas Jack just shook with silent laughter.

"Actually, GENTLEMEN, it was _my idea_ to bring... Pitch Black here.  _To recuperate_."  Emily stopped herself just short of saying "Creak" again.  She turned her head slowly to her elder son, then to the Easter Bunny, and fixed them each with a stern glare.  "I was advised that someone or several someones might have a problem with that.  _Are_ we going to have a problem?"

Jack had the grace to look abashed, although his eyes twinkled as he said, "No, ma'am".  Bunnymund, still looking stunned, merely shook his head.  Jamie reiterated, "No, Ma'am", although he really didn't have to.

"Good.  Now let's all try to get a night's sleep.  You Guardians will probably have a lot to discuss amongst yourselves, and I need to have a family council with my children... ALL my children... when we're all awake enough to do it."

Emily's tone softened.  "I've been told that Pitch will be asleep at least through the weekend, thanks to Sandy.  I'll have Jack contact you all when we're ready to take our next step."

Seeing which way the wind was blowing, metaphorically at least, Jack and Jamie both beat a hasty retreat upstairs.  Bunnymund hung back for a moment, looking thoughtful.  He said solemnly, "If your mind's made up, I know I can't stop you, sheila.  Like daughter, like mother, eh?"  Emily couldn't resist a smile at that. "But if anything... ANYTHING... happens between now and tomorrow night that y'think you can't handle, you can call me with this."  He held out a paw and handed her an egg-shaped stone painted with Michaelmas daisies.  "Take it outside, throw it at the ground, and I'll come back here like a shot."

With that parting injunction, Bunnymund headed towards the back door.  Emily went with him, as much to see him off as to make sure Abby, the greyhound, was securely in the kitchen.  She watched as the Easter Bunny loped down the back stairs, tapped a hind foot on the snowy ground, and disappeared down the tunnel that was suddenly there and then not there, an incongruous flower left in its place.

Back inside, she carefully and quietly opened the hall closet. She was surprised to see that Jack had attempted to make the Boogeyman somewhat comfortable; the dark spirit was now curled up on a heap of summer blankets and extra pillows on the closet floor, the picnic blanket from the car tucked in all around him, his head still wreathed in impossible butterflies.

Emily whispered, "Good night, Creak," and gently closed the closet door.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have had most of this chapter written for the past month, but hesitated to post it because it didn't feel quite "done". If it seems abrupt or draggy, let me know in the comments.


	8. The Gates Of Horn And Ivory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which little happens in the view of the waking world, but the field of oneironautics may tell a different tale.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, folks, I know it's been a long time since I've updated, and I apologize that this is a very short chapter. I'm just getting over pneumonia and have had other physical health problems as well. I have a longer chapter in draft that is giving me a bit of trouble, and I thought I'd put this up as sort of a peace offering so my readers did not think this story was abandoned. Thanks for sticking with me.

As it turned out, Pitch Black stayed asleep for weeks, not days, after the combination of Sandy's dreamsand wallop and Jack's frost lightning attack.  

After the second night he slept, not on the floor of a back hallway closet, but on a pullout sofa-bed in an attic room illuminated only with a blacklight. 

His near-constant rapid eye movements gave the impression, to his round-the-clock minders, that he was continuously dreaming without respite.. a state that some of them found quite worrying.

After the first week, those watching Pitch began to take longer breaks during their shifts, since it was quite wearing to humans and spirits alike to be unceasingly vigilant. 

The Nightmare King was never actually left alone, but on occasion the watchers' eyes would themselves close. 

It was a fortnight before the razor-winged butterflies stopped circling Pitch's head and crumbled into glittering piles of black, blue, and gold dust on the floor.  To Sophie, startled awake from her doze against Bunny's shoulder, the noise sounded like the crash of tiny bells. 

Pitch, however, did not wake.  

Three days into the third week, a sliver of silver could be seen through the Boogeyman's eyelids and eyelashes, but he stayed dormant and unmoving.  Monty had Tooth dissolved into uncontrollable giggling over the notion that perhaps Pitch, like Monty's pet tortoise, should have been shifted to the refrigerator for proper hibernation conditions.  Whether the Nightmare King would have enjoyed the comparison to a sluggish reptile remained to be seen.

By Wednesday the 22nd, almost a full month into what she called "Pitchwatch", Emily was complacent enough to sneak away from her now solitary post to grab a cup of coffee in the middle of the afternoon.  It was break week for both the elementary school and the high school, and her annual week-long do-nothing vacation.  She had insisted that the kids take time to BE kids and to hang out with their friends, so the house was quiet for a change.  It had been a freakishly warm February, and today was no exception, with outdoor temperatures nearing eighty.  The stifling air in the attic had made Emily want to nap, and that called for an emergency infusion of caffeine.

She heard a clinking of dishes as she got to the bottom of the stairs.  Thinking it was Jack returning from cooler climes, she called out as she strolled into the kitchen, "Did you bring me back anything from Siberia?"

"The very next time I am in Tyumen, dear lady, I will return to you with a lavender raf."

An impossibly tall, impossibly slender grey-skinned being, garbed in black satin pyjamas and a black velour dressing gown, held out a steaming cup of robusta to her, fresh from the pot.

Emily screamed.

The Nightmare King grinned.


	9. Colloquy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Bennett / Frost household come to a meeting of the minds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter ended up a lot longer than planned, which makes me wonder if the next one will follow suit. I'm the one writing this fic, and even I don't know!

_**Three weeks and four days earlier...** _

=======================

Emily was bounced out of bed much earlier on that Saturday morning than she would have liked, awakened by the downstairs duet of dog and daughter.  Abby was growling and barking, and Sophie was trying to quiet her, making more noise in doing so than the greyhound was.  What had gotten the dog wound up this time?

Oh.  Right.  Their inadvertent houseguest, whom Jack had left in perhaps NOT the most dignified of positions in a closet, wrapped up in a gaudy tartan blanket.

It was shaping up to be a long, long, long weekend.  Her book club meeting felt like it had happened years ago, not the night before.

She fumbled for her glasses on the nightstand, shoved her feet into slippers, and went down to the kitchen to get answers and to ask more questions.

Jamie, bless him, had set up the coffeemaker to start brewing and was in the middle of mixing batter for pancakes.  He looked so serious as he stood with one foot on a breakfast nook stool, counting spoon-strokes under his breath.  Emily guessed that her son needed the solace of the math involved in cooking, and was using it today to cope.  She asked quietly, "Do you want to tell me now what happened last night, Jamie, or do you want to wait for Jack and Sophie?"

He was silent as he finished stirring and put the bowl down on the counter, reached up to get aluminum foil out of the cupboard, and covered the batter.  Emily took a seat and waited patiently.  Finally Jamie stopped fussing with things and let out a very adult-sounding sigh before clambering onto his own stool like the little boy he used to be.

He spoke slowly, picking his words with care as though treading through a verbal minefield, clearly expecting his mother to disapprove at some point of the advantages that he, Jamie Bennett, and his friend Claude Belazair had taken with their volunteer positions at the public library.

Claude had actually been the first one to see the Boogeyman in one of the shadowy corners of the audiovisual wing.

He swore to Jamie up, down and sideways, that a week before Halloween  he'd seen none other than Pitch Black in The Vault... the always locked and never opened without extreme permission room where old phonograph and even Victrola records were kept.  It was an open secret in school that Claude was a serious music nerd as well as a jock, and his academic advisor had referred him for the intern position, assisting with The Great 78 Project, to get National Honor Society cred. Jamie's duties were more generalized, reshelving books, magazines and DVDs, but he ended up in the AV for part of almost every shift.  People were slobs and left things everywhere!

Jamie had scoffed at first at what Claude was telling him, but successive Friday night sightings by both of them, always in The Vault, convinced them.  What neither the boys could figure out was _WHY_ the Boogeyman was hanging out in just the one spot.

"Sometimes he'd be popping in and out for most of our shift, sometimes he'd stay just a couple of minutes.  He'd just swoop up out of the corner of the room and start walking through the record stacks.... I mean REALLY through them, like a ghost.  Then he'd find a section that he'd get fascinated with and he'd get solid so he could flip through all the albums."

Emily sipped at her coffee as she listened, noting that Jamie had made the effort to dig out her stash of organic Guatemalan light roast.  "Did he ever try to play the records?"

Her son swallowed hard.  "No.. but I think he really wanted to. Mom... sometimes he'd look like you did just after Dad left. You know... kind of broken." 

(She had hoped that she'd hidden her feelings better than that back then.  Trust Jamie to have picked up on them.)

"I didn't think the Boogeyman _**could**_ be sad... when Jack and the Guardians fought him, he'd be either angry or gloaty..."

At this point Sophie and Jack came barreling into the kitchen and the moment was lost.  Emily and Jamie exchanged a look, and then the four of them got down to the business of making pancakes.  By unspoken agreement, the topic of what to do with a recumbent Nightmare King was shelved until after breakfast. 

========================

Sophie had expected to be bored when her mom stated they were going to have an unscheduled Family Council right after she and Jack did the dishes, before everyone was free to enjoy their Saturday.  Sometimes they'd be about fun stuff like planning trips, but usually Family Councils were discussions about extra "responsibilities", now that she and Jamie were "getting older" (Mom always avoided the expression "growing up", ever since Jack came to live with them).  Sophie had learned in the last year to yawn with her mouth closed and then complain later to her brothers. 

This afternoon, however, was VERY different than what she expected.  Her mother, after gathering them all in the living room, had just dropped the bombshell that Pitch Black was there and was going to be around for a while.  Sophie bounced excitedly on the hassock next to the chair where Jack was sprawled.

"You managed to capture THE BOOGEYMAN??!!  And he's in our HOUSE??!!  Cool, Mom!"

Emily winced.  "Not captured, dear.  Jamie and Sandy rescued him.  He needs our help, the way anyone else would."

Jack snorted at that and started passing his staff from hand.  It seemed too casual a gesture to be casual, and Emily made a mental note to ask him about that later.  

She was reminded that Sophie only had the word of Jamie, Jack, their friends, and the other Guardians to go by concerning Pitch, since Sophie had been home and in bed when they defeated him.   (At least she hoped Sophie had been in bed.  Her daughter had thankfully outgrown the habit of sleeping on the floor.)  So of course Sophie's view would be different because of secondhand experience.

"All right, gang.  I want you all to listen to what Jamie went through last night, and then we need to figure out what to do.  Obviously we're going to need Guardian input, but for now we've got a hurt, sick guest under our roof, even if he is a spirit."  Emily turned to Jamie, next to her on the couch.  "You've got the floor, James Cameron Bennett.  Go for it!"

Jamie gave an abbreviated version of what he'd told her in the kitchen, making it a point to emphasize that while they could see Pitch through the glass door of The Vault, Pitch either couldn't see them watching him, or else he was ignoring them.  "Claude and I were almost starting to have fun with it, you know?  Like it was a challenge.  But last night Pitch didn't show up at all... until he was just there."

Disappointed, Claude had already filled his timesheet for the night and was out front waiting for Mrs. Belazair to pick them both up.  Jamie was still gathering up newspapers, as well as illicit coffee cups and food wrappers, in the main reading room.

The Boogeyman had come shooting out of the shadows under one of the tables.  He had the Sandman perched astride his shoulders "like some weird kind of piggyback ride,"  according to Jamie, "and then just kind of kept going until he hit the wall.  And I mean, he HIT the wall.  Hard."

Pitch had made a noise like "Oof!!", which Jamie had never heard anyone say outside of cartoons, and had pinwheeled wildly backwards.  Sandy had floated up out of harm's way and had rapidly made a dreamsand mattress for Pitch to land on.

"I was really surprised that Sandy did that.. I would have thought he'd let him fall on his ass----"

Sophie giggled, Jack guffawed, and Emily frowned, but decided to let it pass this once.

"---but Sandy turned to me with this serious look on his face and made a _ssshhhh_ sign at me.  And then I got a really good look..."

Jamie leaned forward and hugged his knees while he described the injuries and physical neglect that Emily had seen.  That sobered her other children up.  "The way Sandy was acting, he wasn't the one who hurt Pitch... he was trying to rescue him from something else.  But he wouldn't tell me anything other than making one of his signs for a telephone."

Fifteen-year-old Jamie, while impulsive, was a lot more cautious than ten-year-old Jamie.  This had become bigger than something kids could handle, and Jamie realized he couldn't rope Claude in without a lot of static from Claude's mother.  So he texted Claude, told him his own mom was going to pick him up at the library, and that he'd see the Belazairs tomorrow.

Emily rubbed circles on her son's back, giving him silent encouragement to continue.  He lifted his head and kept going with his story.  "Sandy gave me a thumbs up, and started floating himself and Pitch to the door.  I wrote up my timesheet real fast, said goodnight to Mr. Zimmerman at the info desk, and followed Sandy's cloud outside.  I don't know where we would have ended up, but then something else happened, and that's when I called the house and asked Sophie to call you, Mom."

The "something else" was apparently not something the Sandman had counted on.  As they approached the gazebo on the Common, the dreamsand mattress had suddenly just disintegrated under Pitch, and the already groggy Boogeyman had fallen through it, had landed halfway on, halfway off the wooden steps, and had whacked his head hard enough to knock himself out. 

"I don't think Sandy expected that, but he still wouldn't answer any of my questions... He just kept making a sign with a clock with spinning hands., and I thought that meant 'later', so I stopped asking.  Then Mom showed up, and then Pitch came awake enough to say something weird, and then Mom went to get the car, and then Jack got there, and..."

Jamie's voice trailed off, and he looked sheepishly at his older brother.  Jack looked back at him with an embarrassed grin and interjected, "And then Jack overreacted because he thought the big bad Boogeyman had decided to attack the two of you."

And, Emily surmised, Pitch must have tried to use nightmare sand to defend himself, Jack must have countered with frost lightning, and Sandy must have tried to defend Pitch in the best way he knew how... by putting the Nightmare King to sleep. All three attacks must have happened at once, which accounted for the odd colour striations of the dreamsand over Pitch's head.

Sophie asked, "So you guys brought him here?  What'll we do when he wakes up?"

Now there was a million-dollar question, and the other three looked at her blankly.  Jack spoke first.  He said firmly, "That's where it becomes Guardian business, sprout.  Once Pitch is awake, we'll deal with him spirit to spirit.  Until then..."

"Until then, " Emily cut him off, "he is a guest under our roof, who has been injured by persons or spirits or forces unknown, and..."

"And I still have the floor!" shouted Jamie, which silenced everyone.

Emily was torn between annoyance and pride.  She said gently, "Yes, you do, Jamie.  Until you wish to turn it over to general discussion."

Her middle son seemed mollified by that.  "I have one more thing to say, and then we can all make suggestions.  But I think that while Pitch is asleep, some of us or all of us talk to Sandy, since he was there.  I think that's the only way to find out what happened and once we know, then we can decide what to do."  He smiled.  "Okay.  The floor is now open."

Jack put his staff down slowly and raised his hand.  "I agree with Jamie that talking to our friendly neighborhood dream guy is a good first step.  But I gotta say that Pitch makes me nervous, even when he's conked out.  I just want all of you to be safe.  I'm supposed to be spreading snow in New hampshire right now, but I'll stick around here a couple of days to keep an eye on things."

"I can only follow what Sandy's saying when he keeps it simple," Sophie chimed in.  "This sounds really complicated." 

Emily looked around the room.  "Agreed.  Which means we have to get the Guardians involved.  Bunny gave me a way to contact him, and I plan to use it.  But not until tomorrow.  It's your weekend... I want you guys to do today what you usually get to do.  Stay away from the back hall closet, AND from the attic, and I'll see everyone back here for dinner at six."  She stood up and stretched.  "Meeting adjourned."

Sophie and Jamie wasted no time in beating a hasty retreat.

Jack lingered.  "What are you planning, Em?"

She looked at him over the rims of her glasses, expecting resistance.  "I'm going to see about finding somewhere in this house that's more comfortable for a Nightmare King to recover.  Any more questions?"

"Yeah.  Do you need a hand?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sharp-eyed observers will notice a few changes to this story's tags.


End file.
